18.726
Table of contents
- Course Info
- Realistic Prerequisites
- Subject Matter
- Course Staff
- Lectures
- Problem Sets
- Exams
- Resources
- Grading
- Advice to Future Students
Course Info
| Class Size | 23 |
| Hours/Week | 12.4(12 responses) |
| Instructors | Davesh Maulik (Lecturer) |
| # of Responses to Course 18 Underground Questions | 8/23 |
Realistic Prerequisites
- 18.725 was a hard pre-req.
- Knowledge of commutative algebra and differential geometry was useful.
Subject Matter
- The content was theoretical, broad, and foundational.
Course Staff
- The course staff was quite approachable and helpful.
- The professor was enthusiastic about the material.
Lectures
- The lectures were fast-paced but clear and useful and gave intuition.
- Students also learned a lot from the textbook and the psets.
Problem Sets
- Challenging but not overwhelming.
- They were long but there were no overly-grindy problems.
Exams
- This class did not have exams in Spring 2021.
Resources
- One textbook (Vakil).
- Also, there were lecture notes in the class. Towards the end, other sets of notes were referenced as well, but they were less useful than the textbook.
Grading
- The grade was entirely based on psets.
- Students generally felt that grading was fair and lenient.
- The grade distribution/cutoffs were not given.
Advice to Future Students
- “Definitely go in prepared (especially wrt soft prereqs), because algebraic geometry is tough. I’d suggest reading the textbook in case anything doesn’t make sense, because it explains things very clearly.
- “Be prepared to spend a lot of time working on psets. Also pset with other people!”